Barkha Dutt's 'The Mojo Story' YouTube account hacked, lost content restored

Barkha Dutt and The Mojo Story team had spent four months on the road in 2020, covering India's COVID-19 crisis.

Veteran journalist Barkha Dutt on Monday said the YouTube account of her digital news platform, The Mojo Story, lost all its content after hackers gained access to the account and deleted videos on the platform. She said her company had urged YouTube several times to “freeze the platform so that the hackers could not alter it”. The account has now been secured and the content has been retrieved.

“We take account security very seriously. After being alerted by The Mojo Story of their account being compromised due to unauthorized activity, our teams investigated the case and we worked closely with The Mojo Story to secure and restore the account," a YouTube spokesperson told Moneycontrol.

“After hours of urging @TeamYouTube to act and being assured action is being taken, I woke up to find @themojostory channel content all deleted by the hackers - four years of blood, toil, sweat, tears, 11 thousand videos, COVID work of 3 years, all gone. I am heartbroken,” Dutt had tweeted on Monday morning, tagging Neal Mohan, YouTube’s Indian-origin CEO.

Hackers had renamed the news platform’s YouTube account as “@teslanewstar05” and deleted all videos. They added a video featuring billionaire Elon Musk.

“I don’t know how many times we urged @YouTube to freeze the platform so that the hackers could not alter it. But we kept being told "process of investigation has to be followed" - and now it’s gone,” Barkha Dutt tweeted.

I dont know how many times we urged @YouTube to freeze the platform so that the hackers could not alter it. But we kept being told "process of investigation has to be followed" - and now its gone.

— barkha dutt (@BDUTT) June 5, 2023

The platform lost its YouTube content a day after Dutt took to Twitter to say that The Mojo Story's e-mail and YouTube accounts have been hacked and that the team is unable to access them.

In 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown, Dutt and The Mojo Story team traveled 30,000 km, spent four months on the road, reporting from 14 states across India.